Skip to main content

Digital Foundry: Select PS4 games are performing worse on PS4 Pro

The PlayStation 4 Pro promises to greatly enhance your existing PlayStation 4 library with higher resolutions, better frame rates, and more intricate visual effects, but a select group of titles appear to actually run slightly worse on the new hardware.

Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry reported that several games, including new releases The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, saw lower frame rates and other visual problems on PlayStation 4 Pro, even when running the games on a standard 1080p television.

Recommended Videos

The Last of Us: Remastered, which still features both 30-frames-per-second and 60-frames-per-second options, has encountered issues across both modes. The 60fps option now routinely will drop by about five or six frames per second.

The 30 frames per second mode won’t feature as many general performance issues, but other, more unusual problems have been recorded. Industry insider “Shinbo602” posted videos of water textures turning to bright white splotches on the ground, but the problem seems to be rectified by switching to the higher-frame-rate option.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided saw similar issues. It isn’t exactly a technical powerhouse on standard hardware, and Digital Foundry found that frame rate drops were just as frequent during the game’s first mission on PlayStation 4 Pro, occasionally dropping as low as 20 frames per second. Later parts of the game do run better with the PlayStation 4 Pro, however, with smoother performance and less screen tearing. As Mankind Divided was one game that can cause headaches due to its frame drops, particularly in the “hub” areas, we’re hoping Square Enix and Eidos Montreal can get the game performing as it should.

While we aren’t thrilled about the console’s lack of a 4K Blu-ray player and finicky HDR support, we still really like the PlayStation 4 Pro. For $400, however, these issues really should have been ironed out.

Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
PlayStation has quietly doubled the price of Horizon Zero Dawn on PS4
Aloy aiming an arrow into the wilderness at a robot.

Following the announcement of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered for the PlayStation 5 and PC, PlayStation has raised the price of the original game's PlayStation 4 Complete Edition by $20 on the PlayStation Store.

As that edition of the game had been retailing for $20 for a couple of years now, that means PlayStation has doubled the price without warning.

Read more
PS5 Pro appears to help a lot with performance mode, analysis finds
The front of the PS5 Pro is shown close up.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: PS5 Pro vs PS5 - A Vast Improvement At 60FPS

We now know that the PlayStation 5 Pro will mainly offer some performance boosts over the base PlayStation 5 console, but what does that mean exactly? Sony can say that there will be more frames per second (fps)or higher resolutions, but what does that look like, and is it worth the $700 upfront cost?

Read more
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor finally coming to PS4 and Xbox One in September
Cal Kestis wielding his blue lightsaber and carrying BD-1 in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

EA and Respawn Entertainment have revealed that PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will come out on September 17. That means players who only own last-gen consoles will be able to try out this excellent action-adventure game that was previously exclusive to PC and current-gen consoles.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a sequel to 2019's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and continues the story of Cal Kestis, who stumbles upon a new threat connected to the universe's High Republic era. I gave the game a four-star review when it launched in April 2023, writing that "Star Wars Jedi: Survivor still tells a thematically rich, character-driven Jedi tale in one of the most densely packed 3D Metroidvania games I’ve ever played. It’s now the definitive single-player Star Wars experience."

Read more